This would be funny if it weren’t so serious. More than a week later and our intrepid journalists still haven’t figured out the problem at No. 4 is not the reactor but the pool, although the more serious condition now at No. 3 seems to have inspired them to heat up the rhetoric just a bit.

The blogosphere’s been all over this one for a couple of weeks, but it’s still nice to get (re-)confirmation, if only in a short inside paragraph.  Doomers will recall that the spent fuel pool in this building has over a thousand assemblies, many really hot because they represent the reactor core that had been moved aside for maintenance.

Reuters (5/25 ’11): “Q+A-What’s going on at Japan’s crippled nuclear power plant?”

Officials are also concerned about the slow pace of cooling at the No. 3 reactor, and the No. 4 reactor was so badly damaged by a hydrogen explosion that workers will have to try to shore it up with steel beams and concrete to prevent a collapse. // In an effort to limit the spread of radioactive dust, the No. 1, No. 3 and No. 4 reactors will be covered with giant tent-like polyester covers supported by steel beams.

ZH has been calling those covers the “circus tent,” and is worried that cutting off the view from the web cam will result in even less information leaking out from this already very controlled story.

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